


see the wonders (i might just change your life)

by shineyma



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-13
Updated: 2020-06-13
Packaged: 2021-03-03 20:47:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,485
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24701806
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shineyma/pseuds/shineyma
Summary: Upon her return from Hydra, Jemma expected many things. Finding a doppelgänger in Vault C was not one of them.
Relationships: Hive/Jemma Simmons
Comments: 6
Kudos: 40





	see the wonders (i might just change your life)

**Author's Note:**

> Ta-da! Week twenty-four! And it was a rough one so y'all, have mercy.
> 
> Thanks for reading and, as always, please be gentle if you review! <3
> 
> (and wish me luck for next week, because if I'm gonna miss any fic, that one seems likely. gonna be a loooooooong week.)

There are a number of things Jemma expects from her first day back at the Playground after returning from Hydra. The fraught, heartbreaking silence with Fitz that became their new normal in the days before she left. Awkward introductions to the new recruits. A (hopefully) less awkward reunion with Skye.

She _doesn’t_ expect to find Coulson waiting for her in the kitchen at five a.m.

“Oh!”

“Sorry,” Coulson says, rising from his seat as Jemma, winded by the shock, tries not to clutch her chest too obviously. “Didn’t mean to scare you.”

_Then why were you just sitting there in the dark_ , she doesn’t ask.

Instead, she pastes on a cheerful smile and says, “That’s quite all right. I’m sorry to disturb you.”

“Don’t be,” he says. “I was waiting for you.”

His tone makes it distinctly ominous.

“Well,” she says, a touch awkwardly, “here I am. What can I do for you, sir?”

“Walk with me,” he invites, already heading for the door.

With one quick, longing glance at the cabinet that holds the tea, she obediently falls into step with him.

“Two weeks ago,” he says, “there was an incident in the lab.”

An _incident_ he feels the need to tell her about, alone, first thing in the morning? Jemma’s heart misses a beat, then triples in speed to make up for it.

“Was anyone hurt?” she asks.

“No,” he says. “It wasn’t that kind of incident.”

That’s something, at least. “Then what sort of incident was it?”

“The kind that ends in this,” he says, and passes her a tablet.

Jemma is well accustomed to reviewing data on the move, examining the results of this test or that while hurrying up the Bus’ stairs to report said results to Coulson in an emergency—and even back in her pre-field days, when she was in the habit of refreshing her memory on all the data before reporting to her superiors. Walking and absorbing information is no more difficult than walking and breathing.

And yet, as soon as she lays eyes on the tablet’s screen, she suddenly loses her ability to do all three.

“Wh—” Arrested by the sight, she tries and fails to find words. “How—?”

The tablet is displaying a security feed—from Vault C, according to the stamp. Unlike Vault D, from which they were forced to remove all elements of comfort after Ward’s repeated suicide attempts, Vault C is fairly well-appointed. There’s a table and a chair, a small bookcase, and a little lamp—all bolted in place, of course, but better than nothing.

And there in the chair, curled up in a comfortable position she knows well, is—appears to be—Jemma herself.

“Your guess is as good as mine,” Coulson says cheerfully, then pauses. “Well, let’s be honest, your guess is a lot _better_ than mine.”

She barely registers the humor. “An imposter?”

A photostatic veil is the obvious answer, but if that were the case, why wouldn’t the team have taken it away from the woman?

“That was our first guess,” he nods. “But she’s not wearing a veil and, as far as we can tell, she’s you.”

“That’s not possible,” Jemma says, somewhat numbly.

“You wouldn’t think so,” he agrees, and indicates the tablet in her hands. “Go to the other window.”

Obediently, Jemma does—and finds a DNA comparison ready and waiting for her. The bright green **98% MATCH** at the top of the screen is…something.

“Hers and mine, I presume?” she asks, already scrolling to the side-by-side analysis.

“Yep.” Gently, Coulson tugs her back into motion. “We had to get Preston to analyze it, but he was pretty confident.”

“Hm.”

Puzzlingly, the two percent variance isn’t a result of the markers the Chitauri virus left in her DNA. _Those_ are present and accounted for in the imposter’s sample.

“Fascinating,” she murmurs, isolating the difference. It’s something wholly unfamiliar—something for which the database has no point of reference. “Has she said anything?”

“Yeah,” he says. “She claims to be from a parallel universe.”

At that, Jemma looks up. “A _parallel universe_? Like in Doctor Who?”

“Uh huh.” Coulson gives her a wry little smile. “That was the exact example she used.”

Oddly discomfited, she returns her attention to the tablet and reopens the window with the feed from Vault C.

The other her—if the claim can be believed—hasn’t moved. She’s just…there. Reading a book. At five in the morning.

“You said there was an incident in the lab,” she remembers.

“Oh, right.” Coulson turns them down another corridor; belatedly, Jemma realizes they’re heading for the Vaults. “Yeah, she showed up in the middle of a little lightning storm. It was crazy. Video’s on there somewhere.”

She’ll want to watch that later, of course, but for now—

“What else has she said? Why did she come?”

“She hasn’t,” he says. “Said, I mean. Aside from insisting that she really is Jemma Simmons and explaining the parallel universe thing, she hasn’t said anything—except to demand to speak to you.”

“Ah,” she says, considering that. “That’s…unsettling.”

“Tell me about it,” he agrees. “That was some déjà vu I didn’t need.”

In light of the path they’re on… “I take it you do intend for me to speak with her?”

“If you don’t mind,” he says. “Gotta say, I’ve been dying for answers. I won’t force you, but—”

“No, I don’t mind,” she says. “I’m quite curious myself.” She returns to the feed again, studying the fall of her double’s hair, the way she rests her head on one hand. “She doesn’t _look_ as frightening as Ward.”

Coulson shakes his head. “You only say that because you’ve never gotten between yourself and science.”

The mock-solemn words make her smile, as was likely his intent—the look he gives her is certainly pleased enough to suggest as much. It eases something in her chest, and she returns her attention to the tablet with a lighter heart.

One left turn later, they reach the door to Vault C.

“You sure about this?” Coulson asks, hand resting on the door handle. “Because if you don’t want to talk to her…”

“I do,” Jemma assures him. “Very much so.”

“Okay, then,” he says, and opens the door. “Down we go.”

The overhead lights gradually brighten as they descend, so it’s no surprise that Jemma’s apparent double is waiting for them by the time they reach the bottom of the stairs.

What is a surprise is looking at her. Jemma thought the security feed had prepared her, but seeing it—her own face on another woman, a woman precisely her height, with the same expression of fascination Jemma herself must be wearing—in person is something else entirely.

Coulson, as is his wont, sums it up very well. “Weird.”

“Yes,” Jemma agrees, mouth dry. “Quite.”

“This is a surprise,” her double says, intonation unsettlingly similar to Jemma’s own. “I was beginning to think you weren’t coming.”

“I’ve been away,” Jemma says, and leaves it at that.

Her double hums doubtfully, then looks to Coulson. “Why are you still here?”

Jemma blinks, surprised by the sudden rudeness, but Coulson appears to have expected it.

“Did I mention she’s a bit demanding?” he asks Jemma.

“No,” she says. “You left that out.”

“Right,” he says. “Well, she is. You want me to stay?”

After a swift glance at her double’s face, Jemma concludes she won’t be sharing anything of note while Coulson is here. She shakes her head.

“That’s all right,” she says. “You can go.”

“Okay,” Coulson says, and trades her the tablet she’s holding for one he retrieves from the stand in front of the cell’s invisible barrier. “You remember how to work the controls?”

“I do,” she confirms.

“Good.” He rests a hand on her shoulder for a moment, then squeezes briefly. “I’ll be right upstairs, okay? If you need me, just hit the alert button and I’ll come running.”

“Yes, sir,” she says. “Thank you.”

He squeezes her shoulder again, then lets go.

“You girls play nice,” he warns, and heads for the stairs.

Jemma doesn’t watch him go—but her double does. Her expression is…very odd.

“Is something wrong?” Jemma asks.

The other Jemma doesn’t speak until the door has closed behind Coulson. Even when she does, she does so very slowly, as though she’s testing the words out: “You called him _sir_.”

“Well, yes.” It takes her a moment to process the implications of her double’s disbelief; when she does, she finds herself caught between fascination and a very peculiar kind of discomfort. “Do you—in your universe, do you outrank Coulson?”

Her double drags her eyes away from the door to pin her with a look of haughty disdain.

“I,” she says, “outrank _everyone_.”

There’s something there—something unsettling.

“You’re the Director?” Jemma asks, and somehow already knows the answer she’ll get.

Sure enough, her double’s condescending smile clearly communicates her _no_. “I said _everyone_ , not _everyone in SHIELD_.”

Well. Hm.

“So that makes you…?”

“The queen,” Jemma’s double says simply.

In truth, Jemma isn’t quite certain what she was expecting. Whatever it was, however, it wasn’t _that_.

“Of England?” she asks, thrown.

“Of everything,” her double corrects.

Fascinating. “So, the Earth you come from is…?”

“Unified,” her double provides. “There are no more countries or kingdoms or borders. No SHIELD. No Hydra. Just one planet, united, under our rule.”

There are several implications in that statement, not least of which that this _unification_ is somewhat recent—recent enough that the other Jemma says ‘no more’ countries, as though their end was not so long ago. The concept of herself as some sort of…of _conqueror_ , however, is too much to immediately process. She chooses instead to focus on a smaller piece of the whole.

“Our?” she asks.

“Myself,” her double says, “and my king.”

“Your king,” Jemma echoes. It puts a strange itch in her shoulders, a discomfort she can’t even begin to explain, even to herself. “Anyone I’d know?”

The other Jemma’s eyes move slowly over first her and then Vault C.

“I doubt it,” she says, rather derisively, “but one can hope. Alveus?”

The name is unfamiliar. Jemma shakes her head.

“I’m sorry,” her double says—and surprisingly, she honestly looks it. “You have no idea what you’re missing.”

The sympathy stings more than the derision did. “Life as a conqueror?”

“As a _unifier_ ,” her double stresses.

“It _was_ you, then?” she asks. “You and this Alveus, you—you took over the planet? Destroyed governments, ended SH—”

“Ended _pain_ ,” her double interrupts. “Perhaps your Earth is some peaceful haven of a utopia, but ours was not. People were homeless, starving. Uneducated. Abused.” She smiles, beatific and eerie. “We saved them.”

Jemma scoffs. “From freedom?”

“From pain,” her double says again. “And doubt, and fear. Our people are happy.” She looks Jemma up and down, scathing. “Are _you_?”

Honestly, no—but that hardly justifies overthrowing legitimate governments and _conquering the planet_. Her double is clearly mad.

That in mind, there’s no point in arguing this further. She won’t convince a woman who considers herself “queen of everything” that she was wrong to take on such a title—and Jemma herself won’t be convinced her double was _right_.

As such, she chooses to move on.

“If your Earth is so wonderful,” she says, “why did you come to ours?”

Her double’s mouth tightens. “It wasn’t my intent, I assure you.”

“It was an accident?” she asks skeptically. Jemma’s had her fair share of mishaps in the lab, but jumping _universes_?

“Of a sort,” her double says. “I’ve spent several months building a device meant to breach universal barriers.”

Jemma lets that sink in for a moment.

“So you _were_ trying to come here,” she says. “Why? If you mean to conquer us—”

“ _Unify_ ,” her double insists. “And no. I didn’t mean to _come_ anywhere. It was simply a theoretical exercise.” Her eyes wander over Vault C once more. “Your confusion is hardly surprising, however. Judging by the state of your base, I imagine it’s been some time since you had the opportunity for purely intellectual pursuits.”

As her gaze finally returns to Jemma, it becomes pitying.

“How long has it been since you were able to experiment just for the fun of it?” she asks, and Jemma has to look away.

There’s a lump in her throat, one she struggles to swallow past. She honestly doesn’t know. When _was_ the last time she had fun in the lab?

…That isn’t the point. She mustn’t allow her double to distract her.

“If it,” she starts, and pauses to clear her throat when her voice comes out oddly hoarse. “If it was just meant as a theoretical exercise, how did you wind up here?”

For the first time, her double hesitates.

“Well?” Jemma prompts.

Her double sighs and crosses her arms.

“In truth,” she says, “though I hate to admit it…I panicked.”

“Panicked,” Jemma echoes. “I thought there was no fear on your Earth?”

“Funny,” her double says flatly. “But—no. There was…a containment breach. One of the others, a woman working on curing—” She stops, pressing her lips together. “A few years ago, I was exposed to an alien virus. I nearly died.”

“The Chitauri virus,” Jemma says, and her double straightens.

“You, too?” she asks, surprised. “Well, then. Perhaps you understand—I heard the alarms, and I saw the containment breach, and…I panicked. All I could think about was…getting away.” Her arms are still crossed, but it looks more like she’s hugging herself than a defensive posture. “Protecting myself. And the universe hopper was right there, so.” She shrugs, somewhat jerkily. “I hit the button.”

Jemma does understand, all too well. The months she spent on the Bus after the Chitauri virus spoiled her—working only with Fitz, an engineer, meant there was never any risk of containment breaches out of her control. During her time undercover, there were four such incidents.

Each one left her having panic attacks in the nearest stairwell.

“I see,” she says.

“Obviously,” her double continues, “the hopper worked. Unfortunately, it didn’t come with me.”

“Leaving you stranded here,” Jemma concludes.

“Yes.” Her double lets that sit for a moment, then drops her arms and smiles. “But now you’re here. Together, I’m sure we can rebuild the hopper and send me back.”

Something about that rings false. “You didn’t think you could do it alone?”

“Of course I could,” she scoffs. “I built it in the first place. I simply didn’t think your Coulson would permit me to work in a lab unsupervised.”

Reasonable, but… “There are plenty of scientists here who could supervise.”

“Scientists who could keep up with _me_?” her double asks skeptically.

Well…no. Probably not.

“As I thought,” her double says, reading the answer on her face. “And so I was forced to wait for you. When can we start?”

The demand is sudden and, though it shouldn’t, catches Jemma quite off guard.

“Are you in such a hurry to leave?” she asks to give herself a moment to think.

“No offense meant, of course,” her double says, in a tone that suggests precisely the opposite, “but the accommodations do leave something to be desired.” Her expression falls, just barely. “And I miss my husband.”

Though her face is mostly composed, her voice is full of longing. An answering ache wakes in Jemma’s chest, born of envy or sympathy or both.

“Of course,” she says, and sets the control tablet gently on its stand. “I’ll have to clear it with Coulson.”

“Ah,” her double says. “Of course you will.”

Jemma charitably decides to ignore the condescending tone. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

She’s only ever visited Vault D while Ward was bleeding out; he was always unconscious when she left. As such, it takes her by surprise how awkward it is to leave while the occupant of a cell is awake.

Saying _goodbye_ would be odd, she thinks, and too formal. So she just…leaves, walking away and up the stairs, all the while aware of her double’s eyes on her. It’s quite unsettling.

Next time, she decides, she’ll be sure to blank the barrier before she goes.

xxx

After several hours of consideration and debate, Coulson does decide to allow Jemma’s double into the lab. He makes it clear she’s only to work under close supervision—Jemma’s, to ensure her double doesn’t do anything dangerous, and either May, Bobbi, or Trip’s, to protect Jemma should her double become violent.

He even takes the time to draw up a careful schedule of overlapping shifts for the three of them, the better to guarantee full coverage of the lab _and_ mandate meal and rest breaks for the Jemmas. (Some fairly insulting comments about their combined abilities to care for themselves when science is involved are made in the process. Jemma doesn’t deign to respond to those.)

In the end, however, all of the debate and scheduling turn out to be wasted effort. After only a handful of hours in the lab, when their work has _barely_ begun, a strange cloud whirls into being just across the bench from them.

“What the _fuck_ ,” Bobbi says, and Jemma is peripherally aware she’s going for her gun.

“No, wait!” her double exclaims. “This is exactly what—”

She’s interrupted by a clap of thunder and a blinding flash. When Jemma’s vision clears (so to speak; she’s still blinking away spots), there’s a man standing where none was before.

Jemma gapes. Her double, on the other hand, gasps.

“Alveus,” she breathes, and her tone is so—so _something_ , it drags Jemma’s eyes away from the man before them. When she looks at her double, her own breath catches.

She’s hardly made a habit of studying her own expressions, but even if she had, she knows the one her double is wearing would be wholly unfamiliar. Her previously haughty doppelgänger has lit up unbelievably, and that—that indescribable combination of joy, love, and _relief_ —

Jemma’s never felt that. She knows she hasn’t. Even when Fitz woke from his coma, perhaps the happiest day of her life, every bit of joy was mixed up with guilt and fear.

She has to look away from that bliss. Her gaze lands on Bobbi—and Bobbi’s raised gun.

“It’s all right,” she says. “I think.”

“I’m not so sure,” Bobbi says warily. “Step away from him, Simmons. My Simmons.”

Obediently, Jemma takes a few steps back. Her double does precisely the opposite; she scrambles around the lab bench to throw herself in the man’s—in Alveus’—arms.

“Oh,” she nearly sobs. “You’re _here_.”

“I’m here,” Alveus agrees. He’s really very attractive—tall and dark and sharply handsome—and made all the more so by the loving expression he regards Jemma’s double with. “You are well, my Jemma?”

“Better now,” her double says.

He presses a sweet kiss to her hair. “Of course. But you are uninjured?”

“Yes,” she says. “I’m fine, truly. I haven’t been mistreated.”

“I’m glad to hear it,” Alveus says, and lifts his eyes. When his eyes meet Jemma’s, they widen slightly. “Ah.”

“Yes,” Jemma’s double says, turning in his arms to regard her as well. “It’s remarkable, isn’t it?”

“Very,” he agrees, and looks back down at her double with an odd, sudden smirk. “The possibilities are endless.”

Jemma’s double smacks his chest. “Put James away, and don’t even think it. It’s not happening.”

“Of course,” he says, dipping his head. “My apologies, my Jemma.”

An odd mix of longing and discomfort is building in Jemma’s chest. Mad though her double may be, Jemma can’t help but envy her. The way Alveus says _my Jemma_ —as though her name itself is an endearment, her identity alone as meaningful as _love_ or _sweetheart_ —

She shakes herself. This is no time for woolgathering. The odd cloud is still present behind Alveus, and Bobbi is looking twitchier by the moment.

“Alveus, is it?” Jemma asks. “Dare I hope you have a way to take yourself and your Jemma back to your universe? Or have you just stranded yourself here with her?”

“The former,” Alveus says, regarding her with a soft expression. It makes Jemma’s throat itch. “My people on the other side will hold the portal open for as long as necessary.”

It’s for the best, of course, but Jemma’s a touch disappointed. She was rather looking forward to finding out how one builds portals between universes.

Oh, well.

“I suppose this is goodbye, then,” she says to her double—still held in Alveus’ arms, and looking not at all inclined to move.

“So it is,” her double agrees. Like Alveus, her expression is soft; but where his is an odd fondness, hers is sympathy. “Good luck, Jemma. I hope you find your own Alveus soon.”

Not that she’ll be admitting it, but…deep in her heart, where the longing dwells, Jemma rather hopes so, too.

“Thank you,” she says. “Good luck with the, um, queenship.”

Her double’s smile sharpens. “Oh, I don’t need luck for that.” Her eyes move past Jemma, who turns to see Coulson has arrived in the doorway. “Thank you for your hospitality, such as it was. We’ll be going now.”

“Please do,” Coulson says, very dryly.

Alveus shakes his head, but doesn’t comment. Jemma’s double blows her a kiss.

“Good luck,” she says again, and then together, the two of them step into the cloud.

Another blinding flash of light—she’ll have a migraine tonight, like as not—and Jemma’s double, Alveus, and the cloud all disappear.

For a long moment, silence lingers in the lab.

“Well,” Coulson says finally. “That was weird. Let’s pretend it never happened.”

“Yes, please,” Jemma agrees heartily, and Bobbi smiles at her as she finally lowers her gun.

“What?” she asks. “You don’t wanna be queen of the world?”

“I should think not,” she says. “Imagine all the paperwork.”

xxx

Among all his billions of bonds, the connection Alveus maintains with Jemma is unique. With their people, he is bound mind to mind; with Jemma, he is bound soul to soul.

When they step out of the portal and into their living room, he can feel the lightness in hers. It’s been strained by their separation in time and space, but already the pain eases.

“Oh, it’s good to be home,” she says, and crosses to the coffee table. Her travel device rests there, lit up and humming; she runs a hand across the top of it, then switches it off. “How long has it been for you, love?”

“Two hours,” he says. Two long, horrible hours, spent in dreadful emptiness the likes of which he had almost managed to forget in the handful of decades since he escaped Maveth. “As agreed. And for you?”

Jemma shivers. “Two weeks.”

He moves at once to embrace her, horrified by the thought, and though she clings to him, the resolve in her soul doesn’t waver.

“It was worth it,” she says, quietly intense. “For this, it was worth it.”

“It happened as you remember, then?” he asks.

“Oh, yes.” She cuddles in against him, soft and warm, her soul singing to him of relief and love and an old, old wound. “I could see the longing awakening in her. As she is, she can’t understand the necessity of our unity—but love? Happiness? _Peace_? She wants them desperately. And now, she knows precisely where to find them.”

James—James Callaghan, a former vessel from the mid-eighteenth century—whispers a salacious suggestion in the back of Alveus’ mind. He chuckles, but declines to voice it.

“I would not have guessed,” he says instead, “when first we met, that you associated me with peace and happiness.”

Jemma rolls her eyes.

“You know I didn’t,” she says. “But the thought was _there_ —because of this.”

Because she traveled back in time to visit her younger self and introduce her to their potential.

Alveus shakes his head. He was against the plan when Jemma first proposed it, and only her insistence that it had already happened—that it was the first crack in her armor against him—convinced him to allow it. Even so, he spent months delaying her progress with her time travel machine, fearful of its use.

It seems foolish, now that everything has turned out well.

“You told her we were from another universe?” he asks, remembering the young Jemma’s words.

“Mm.” She holds him a little tighter. “Who I was then…I wouldn’t have been able to accept that we were the same person. It was more believable to her that I could be a queen from a parallel universe than a goddess from the future.”

Understandable. In her younger days, Jemma was quite opposed to his plan to bring peace to Earth. He won her over eventually—it was she who made it possible, in the end—but it did take quite some time.

“Did you torment her?” he asks.

Jemma kisses his neck and then pushes out of his arms, heading for the bedroom. “Of course not. Why do you ask?”

“She looked tired,” he says, following in her wake. Jemma alone can draw him thus; all others follow _him_. “Haunted.”

It was painful to see those shadows in the younger Jemma’s eyes—and worse still to know there was nothing he could do to ease them. He was a stranger to that young, fragile Jemma; she would not have welcomed his comfort.

“Ah.” The Jemma who does welcome him shakes her head, even as she draws her shirt over it. “No. She’s just back from months undercover in Hydra. I’m afraid that even leaving out my presence, her homecoming was hardly pleasant.”

Unsurprising. His Jemma’s team, such as they were, never appreciated or cared for her properly. He cannot truly regret it—not when that lack of care so clearly contributed to her eventual acceptance of his intentions—but he certainly disapproves.

Here and now, his Jemma steps out of her (borrowed from her other self, no doubt) jeans and casts him a coquettish look over her shoulder.

“I expect,” she adds, reaching to unclasp her bra, “that my own will be much warmer.”

Alveus closes the distance that separates them in a few quick steps. Their bond thrums between them, Jemma’s soul singing with her joy and desire as he pulls her in close. Her skin is as soft as her love, her kiss as wicked as her grin.

A goddess, made just for him. A light delivered by Fate to lead him home, away from his prison after eons in darkness. What greater proof of his divinity can there be?

“Yes,” he agrees when they part, breathless and aching. “It will be.”

He makes very, very sure of it.


End file.
